


Pointe Shoes, a Flat Foot, and a Pint-Sized Dance Instructor

by fightforyourwrite



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Dance, Gen, Vancouver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 01:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10731597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fightforyourwrite/pseuds/fightforyourwrite
Summary: In which Mikasa prepares her new pointe shoes for her upcoming class and gets her leg manhandled by a tiny Polish dance instructor.





	Pointe Shoes, a Flat Foot, and a Pint-Sized Dance Instructor

**Author's Note:**

> *casually slides back into writing Shingeki No Kyojin fanfiction*

Mikasa Ackerman had a habit of coming to her afternoon classes fifteen minutes early. In the small period of time that she had, she took her new pair of pointe shoes out of their plastic bagging to prepare them for her lesson ahead. 

Mikasa always found that taking the shanks out of her left shoe, but not the other, made things more comfortable for her soles. It compensated for the fact that one of her feet was flatter than the other, a tidbit of information she learned in physio six years ago. 

With a needle and thread, Mikasa darned the ends of her pointe shoes with cream-coloured yarn. She removed the ribbons the shoes came with and replaced them with ones from a roll she bought at a craft store down the street. 

Mikasa claimed to Sasha that she could restitch and customize every new pair of pointe shoes in seven minutes, four and a half if she had to rush. 

The process came to her like breathing. She could do it in her sleep. The years of ballet training under her belt normalized her to the routines she had to face in her daily life. It was difficult, but it wasn’t like it was something she couldn’t handle. 

Mikasa knew what life she lived. It was stressful and time-consuming, but she quite liked it. 

Seventeen years ago, a little, bumbling three-year-old child took a few steps on a dance studio floor for the first time. Fast forward in time, and that child had come much farther than anyone else would have expected. 

In the middle of stitching the ends of her pointe shoes, Mikasa heard the door behind her rattle and open. If the noise didn’t bother her in the midst of class, it wouldn’t bother her now. 

“Four months without me and you still arrive fifteen minutes early,” said the voice of the new person in the room. 

In reaction, Mikasa blinked once and twice again. She stopped stitching her pointe shoes and turned towards the door, locking eyes with a person she hadn’t seen in quite a while. 

“Rico?” Mikasa started. “I thought you were coming back in tomorrow?” 

Rico Brzenska shrugged her shoulders as she slipped off her street shoes. “My plane came in at 8. After Ian picked me up from the airport, I decided to stop by the studio to see how things were going.” 

She placed her shoes down, tucked her socks inside, and set her unreasonably large paper coffee cup down beside them. She took off her jacket and hat to hang them on a hook in the wall before stepping deeper into the studio. 

Rico was short, much shorter than Mikasa, but yet, she was oldest person in the room. Her straight, droopy hair was a shade of grey, and fell over her bespectacled eyes. Her hair often perplexed people, since it was naturally that shade and there was way Rico was a day over forty. 

Mikasa could remember the rumours going around the dance company that Rico was secretly a sixty-year-old woman despite actually being thirty-five, or that all the stress of being a dance instructor caused her hair to turn grey over the years. 

The shorter, but older, woman walked across the dance floor in her barefeet and sat beside Mikasa. The first thing she noticed was the younger dancer’s sewing equipment scattered on the ground. 

“New shoe day?” Rico asked. 

Mikasa nodded her head, “Every five days. Thought you’d remember.” Mikasa went back to stitching, “How was Szczecin?” 

“It was fine. Different from Vancouver, but in a good way. A lot of teaching kids and judging competitions. Nothing out of my league. I flew to Warsaw to teach some workshops for a week,” responded Rico. “And of course, I visited my grandparents.” 

“Good for you,” Mikasa remarked dryly. She tied a knot in the thread after darning the tips of her pointe shoes and cut it with a pair of scissors. “It’s great seeing you back.” 

The corner of Rico’s mouth twitched subtly, which was the closest thing to a smile that Rico Brzenska could muster when off-stage. 

“It’s great being back,” Rico claimed. “Once my jetlag wears off, I’ll be back to teaching.” 

Mikasa nodded and glanced to her hands for a second, making sure to thread her needle properly. “I’ve been looking forward to that. Shadis isn’t a bad temp, but the rumours of his ruthlessness are true.”

“You didn’t believe me when I told you,” Rico reminded, adjusting her legs until she sat with them crossed. “I’m just upset I wasn’t there to watch you attempt to handle him.” 

Mikasa shot her mentor a glare. She could sense a little cheeky humour in Rico’s last statement, which was rare from a woman like her. 

Keith Shadis’s teaching methods were unique, to put things simply. 

Mikasa was not sure how to exactly describe it, but to witness a tall, burly, instructor from hell get worked up to the point throwing chairs at dancers was a surreal experience. 

Finishing multiple double tours was a difficult task enough, but finishing them only to be greeted with a chair flying towards her was something else entirely. 

Mikasa was lucky to have good reflexes, but a classmate of hers wasn’t. Poor Hitch didn’t see that chair coming.  

“He’s harsher than you,” Mikasa claimed. “He spent five minutes screaming at Mina Carolina for being off time by a beat. Made her break down and start crying.”

“I told you that he would do something like that,” said Rico. She glanced over to a wall of the studio, which appeared to have a semi-deep indent inside of it exactly in the same of a human’s body. “Let me guess, he started chair throwing and broke that hole in the wall?”

Mikasa looked over to the wall that Rico was looking at and shook her head. “No, it wasn’t him. We were practicing grand jetes last week and Reiner ended up jumping into a wall.”

Rico blink for a second before nodding slowly. “Interesting. I hope he didn’t hurt himself.”

“He’ll be fine, but the wall is fucked,” Mikasa assured bluntly. 

Rico shrugged, “This building’s old. It’s been in shambles before you were even born.” 

Mikasa liked Rico a lot, but she wouldn’t make it seem like she did. It was rare for her to smile at people, and Rico Brzenska was no exception. 

They shared a subtle sense of affection through nods of understanding and mutual agreements. 

It was hard for Mikasa to believe that she had known Rico for half a decade by now. Five years ago, Mikasa was a fifteen-year-old girl dividing her time between scholastic academics and private lessons with a pint-sized, Polish dance instructor to hone her natural talent. 

Now, she was twenty and already weeks into a contract as a principal soloist. 

Life moved fast in her field of work, but only those who were ready to see it move were allowed to reap the joys of it. 

Dancing came easy to Mikasa. It was her speciality, it was what she could do, and in a way, it was in her blood. 

“You know” Mikasa started, in the middle of darning the ends of her final pointe shoe. She caught Rico’s attention quite quickly. 

“Yes?”

“My mother always added yarn to the end of her shoes every time she got a new pair,” Mikasa explained. She finished stitching and tied a knot into the yarn. 

Rico nodded her head, “Hm. So you enjoy doing things like she did?”

“Why not?” Mikasa questioned rhetorically. She cut the spare yarn with a clean swipe of her scissor’s blade. “You know, I was 3 when I first saw her dancing on stage.” Swiftly, Mikasa put all of her sewing equipment back into its case and zipped it shut. “Do you think I’d even be here if I didn’t want to be like her?”

“She was a soloist back in her day, wasn’t she?” Rico asked, trying to remember tidbits of a story her student had told her. 

“Yes, she was,” Mikasa confirmed, a soft sullenness now inside her voice. “And she was incredible.”  

There was a kind of tension now suddenly inside Mikasa’s head. A fullness, a tightness, something she hadn’t been feeling in the moments before.

Bothered, Mikasa touched her palm to her forehead, pressing down and rubbing. 

She caught a glimpse of herself in the studio’s mirror before turning to Rico, who clearly seemed concerned for her. 

“What’s wrong? Your head again?” 

Mikasa waved her mentor off with her free hand, “It’s fine. It happens. It’ll go away.”

“It better be gone by the time class starts,” Rico noted. She got into her feet and walked behind Mikasa. “You won’t be able to dance like that.”

Suddenly, without warning, Mikasa suddenly felt Rico grasping onto her ankle. She said nothing in response but a rather upset grunt, but that did not stop the foreignness that came with the sensation. 

“How are your feet by the way?” Rico questioned as she stared at Mikasa’s sole. “Is your flat foot still bothering you?” 

Quickly, Mikasa moved her hands to the floor to properly steady herself as her leg got manhandled by a tiny Polish woman. 

“It’s fine. I have to take the shank out of my left shoe to compensate, but I can survive.” 

Mikasa tried to jerk her foot away, but Rico’s grip was like a vice. She remembered that being physically taller and larger than Rico did not make the woman any less stubborn or any more intimidated by her presence. 

Rico was fearless and took no one’s nonsense. Especially Mikasa’s. 

She ran her hand over the younger girl’s sole, “You’re blistering. Consider toe taping before shows. It just might save your life.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Mikasa muttered. She tried to jerk her foot away, but Rico’s grip persisted. “Are you planning on letting me go at one point?”

“In a second, stay still,” Rico insisted. Her grip tightened, causing Mikasa to sigh. “And don’t kick me in the face again. These glasses are new.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, ok, ok, I know that putting Rico in this specific AU instead of Levi might be odd, but Rico Brzenska deserves more attention. 
> 
> I re-watched the Trost Arc and the early part of the Female Titan arc with the court scenes and I was reminded just how interesting Rico Brzenska is. 
> 
> I want to start writing her more, I think she's a really unique character. I might go back on this AU and expand on Rico and Mikasa's specific backstories. I actually ended up thinking about them more than I had to.
> 
> Rico immigrated to Canada from Poland and Mikasa is the only child of Prima Ballerina and a prodigy in the art since birth. That's the basic gist of things, but I feel like I should go further with it. 
> 
> But anyway, I hope you enjoyed the fic.


End file.
